May 5 is the 125th day of the year. There are 240 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Sunday or Monday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Wednesday or Friday (56).
+ 1866 – Memorial Day first celebrated in United States at Waterloo, New York.
+ 1891 – The Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.
+ 1904 – Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball.
+ 1961 – The Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 3: Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight.
+ 1973 – Secretariat wins the 1973 Kentucky Derby in 1:59 2/5, an as-yet unbeaten record.
+ 1994 – American teenager Michael P. Fay is caned in Singapore for theft and vandalism.
(Births)
+ 1818 – Karl Marx, German philosopher, sociologist, and journalist (d. 1883)
+ 1926 – Ann B. Davis, American actress (d. 2014)
+ 1942 – Tammy Wynette, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1998)